i'm in london. i have furious how it looked from here and what it means, if anything, for the global economy. joining me now are lionel barber, editor of "the financial times" and anatole kaletsky, economic columnist for reuters. americans are sure this makes us look like complete idiots. what i'm struck by for the last few years americans have tended to look at europe with a certain sense of superiority. our federal reserve acted more quickly, the t.a.r.p. and things like that case where american democracy was sort of able to act in a crisis. does it now look like we're floundering as much as the europeans, the japanese, even worse? >> well, this was something of a brussels-style fudge in the sense that something was resolved, but not everything. this was a mini stop -- mini deal, a stop gap measure, which essentially prevented, as you say, america going over the fiscal cliff. all the difficult decisions were really postponed on spending. so, i think there was some disappointment in europe looking